


All in a Name

by okayserasera



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 11:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5204762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayserasera/pseuds/okayserasera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His mother named him Love. His father named him Demon. Rasa, Gaara, Temari, gen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All in a Name

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer/author's notes: Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto, not me, no profit involved. No warnings other than suspected infidelity and Rasa being kind of a dick (though let's be honest; that is more or less canon).

Rasa has not given the demon a name and he cannot think of one, so he holds it in his arms an arm's-length away and looks at its eyes. Dead jade eyes unlike his—or Karura's—stare back and look through him. Those eyes are far too-knowing and far too-accusing of life to be something just born. He wonders if this is Karura's final revenge on him.

A girl with sunflower hair enters the room. Her eyes are also green—darker though, somehow that makes the tears more obvious—and are not like his or Karura's either.

Karura had not wanted to marry him, and now she is dead. He is left with the Karura's daughter, the demon, and his Kankuro to call his children.

"Daddy," asks the girl, "Uncle Yashamaru said mommy was dead, but the baby lived. Can I hold him?"

"No," snaps Rasa, "and address me as 'Lord Kazekage' now; you're old enough." He will not let her name him father. Names, as he remembers Karura dying saying, have power.

The girl drips silent tears. Rasa looks into her too-green, too-grieving eyes and the demon's too-pale, too-empty ones. Both of their eyes are unlike Karura's (or his), but as one's eyes cry and the other's just _empty,_ Rasa is reminded of Karura's eyes every time he, the husband who placed a demon in her womb for the sake of the village, saw her in the past seven months. Rasa's hold on the demon tightens, but still the demon does not cry.

"Take it back to the crib," he snaps to the girl-ghost of his dead wife.

"Yes, Lord Kazekage," the girl says.

Rasa never looks either of them in the eye again. Too familiar.

…

Karura died cursing Rasa's name for what he had done to her and her precious child—no, that is wrong—she died giving that _thing_ a name because she said a name was all she could give her youngest as she laid dying. And the name she gave it—Ai, meaning love—was to show her eternal love for the thing she died giving life to. Names are important; names last, she had said.

The memory of Karura's last words make Rasa's thin lips quirk upwards like strings to a puppet. He will keep of Karura's love in death that she would not give him in life. And he will give _her_ son a name. After all, it was Karura herself that said names were important.

"What can I call him, Lord Kazekage?" asks a voice again. It is the girl with hair like sunflowers, snuck back into the room. Her mother never did listen to him either. Rasa favors the window beside the girl with a glare, since even when not crying, her eyes hurt. The girl opens her mouth to persist, "What do I call your son, my brother?"

"Not my son," Rasa interrupts. He pauses; he will not call this child Love. A name is just a sound to call someone, but a person is all in name—a sound. This name will be fitting.

" _Your_ brother killed _your_ mother, so we will call him Gaara," Rasa orders.

What is better a sound than "self-loving demon" for a monster such as this? After all, love for its own existence is the only love the demon will have in this life. Love for its own existence took the only one who could have loved it.

"Gaara, Lord Kazekage ?" the girl echoes.

"Gaara," Rasa agrees.


End file.
